USAA Credit Card Ups the Ante

Cash-back cards are the way to go as we’ve explained numerous times. Unless you’re getting more than the equivalent cash in gift cards or airline miles or whatever, cash is king. Yeah, you might like Starbucks a whole latte, but why get a gift card that you can only spend there when you can get cash to spend anywhere?

Also, it doesn’t make sense to use a debit card or pay with cash if the price is the same (as long as you pay the balance off each month!). Pay with a cash-back card and you get a little discount on every purchase. Over time and combined with other rewards cards, it can really add up. As is the case, our family has several cash back cards. We use Chase Freedom for the seasonal 5% cash-back merchants (it’s gas stations and Walgreen’s this quarter). We use the Amazon Prime Chase Visa for 5% back at Amazon and Whole Foods as well as 2% back at restaurants. And we now have an everything-else-card which gives us 1.5% cash back on everything else:

The $200 cash bonus doesn’t hurt and the 0% APR until Feb 2020 is bonkers.